For those of you that are regular readers of this blog you know that in Daily Fantasy Football we are always striving to find that slight edge on the competition. As a self proclaimed “Fantasy Football Expert” I constantly get tweeted “Who Do I Start” type questions from season long fantasy players as well as DFS’ers. In the past I’ve looked at general rankings and defensive match ups to get a relatively good picture of which players on which teams as slated for a big week. Still there is always room for improvement.
One of the topics I’ve been intrigued by in recent months is using the Vegas lines for Fantasy Football predictions. After all the Vegas Bookmakers are a hell of a lot smarter then any of us. They’re really good at what they do. So why not leverage that knowledge and turn it in to cash in our pockets.
Over the summer I’ve been reading book after book in an attempt to brush up on lineup construction and game prediction theory for the upcoming football season. Quite a few of the books I read contained interviews with “Professional” Daily Fantasy Football players. These are folks that actually make a full time living playing Fantasy Football (some in season long leagues and most in the Daily Fantasy Space). When asked the vast majority of Fantasy Pro’s said that the Vegas Lines were an important factor in their weekly projections. Some DFS Fantasy Football Pro’s went as far as to say the Vegas Lines were the single most influential factor in their weekly projections!
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How The Pro’s Interpret The Vegas Lines – And Some Handy Rules of Thumb
1) It’s not just enough to look at the O/U. Using a combination of the O/U and the game spread you can get a good prediction of the points totals Vegas believes each team will put up. So for example in Week 1 of the 2014 Football Season Denver Faces Indianapolis in a game with a 55 Point O/U. That is the highest O/U of the week. Furthermore Denver is a 7 point favorite. Put that together and we see that Vegas is looking for a final score of 24 IND to 31 Denver. A savvy fantasy owner can extrapolate that the bookmakers believe the Denver Offense will yield 4 TD’s and a FG while Indy will get 3 TD’s and a FG. Obviously this is not an exact science but these fantasy football predictions are better then what the average Joe can come up with and therefore should be taken very seriously.
Rule of Thumb #1) The Pro’s look for the teams destined to score the most points and try to build stacks around them.
2) It’s not just about the O/U. I’ve never been great at predicting fantasy football defenses so this part was fascinating to me. The rule of thumb for choosing a fantasy defense is to look for teams that are a combination of – heavily favored in a particular game and that are able to generate a high number of QB pressures. The theory says big underdogs are likely to be forced into high risk passing situations late in games that often lead to turn overs. As an example of how this works look at my beloved NY Jets over the Rex Ryan era. On paper they have had one of the better Defenses in the league. They have finished top 5 in Run D throughout the Ryan era. Still their Fantasy Defense has not been good. The Jets are missing the magical formula for Fantasy Defense success. Playing from ahead. Their Offense has been sub-par and they rarely play with a big lead. Therefore their Defense has not been able to produce the big fantasy numbers that come when opponents take chances playing catch up.
Rule of Thumb #2) Since most defensive scoring in fantasy results from turnovers it is best to target teams that are heavily favored when choosing fantasy defenses.
3) Expanding on the previous point our third rule of thumb is to target the running backs from teams that are heavily favored. The theory is that teams with a lead often try to run out the clock in the third and fourth quarters. Since Running Back production is directly correlated to touches a team with a lead should see outsized scoring from the running back position. In Week 1 of the 2014 season the Eagles play the Jaguars. The O/U is the second highest of the week at 52. The Eagles are also favored by 11 points in that game. This makes LeSean McCoy close to a must play for week one!
Rule of Thumb #3) Target Running Backs in games with high O/U totals that are playing for the team that is heavily favored
4) Teams that are underdogs in high scoring games can also be valuable fantasy assets. When a team is a heavy underdog (7 or more points) in a game with a high O/U there is a good chance they will be passing heavily to try and come back. This can be fantasy gold for the underdog’s QB and WR’s. This also often leads to reduced output from the underdog’s Running Backs.
Rule of Thumb #’s 4a & 4b) (4a) Avoid RB’s on teams that are heavy underdogs. (4b) Target the QB and WR’s on heavy underdog teams when the O/U lines are high.
Statistical Verification:
I asked our friends over at Lineupleader to run some simulations to test some of these theories. They went over data from the past few seasons which backs up most of the basic theories we just went over. You can read the early results HERE. Most of what they looked at so far dealt specifically with higher projected O/U’s leading to higher fantasy production from particular positions. The data is compelling and agrees with the theories presented above.
Conclusion
Whether you are a season long Fantasy Football player or a Daily Fantasy Football player or both, understanding the story that the Vegas lines are telling is a critical component to projecting player value. Statistics show that when two players are of a similar ranking using the Vegas lines, and more importantly understanding how to read the lines, is a great way to break the tie as far as who to start. It’s not just about starting players in games with high O/U’s. The key is understanding how the bookmakers, whom we can agree are the absolute best at predicting sports contest outcomes, believe the game flow will go. This should lead to higher percentage outcomes when it comes to deciding when a particular player be them an RB, WR or QB should be expected to exceed their average production. This upcoming season I will be relying on the above rules of thumb and the Vegas lines in general for our weekly Fanduel and Draftkings Daily Fantasy Football cheat sheets.